feeling the
miserable conviction that there was an abyss in the shape of a family
secret between my husband and me. In the spirit, if not in the body, we
were separated, after a married life of barely four days.

"Valeria," he asked, "have you nothing to say to me?"

"Nothing."

"Are you not satisfied with my explanation?"

I detected a slight tremor in his voice as he put that question. The
tone was, for the first time since we had spoken together, a tone that
my experience associated with him in certain moods of his which I had
already learned to know well. Among the hundred thousand mysterious
influences which a man exercises over a woman who loves him, I doubt if
there is any more irresistible to her than the influence of his voice. I
am not one of those women who shed tears on the smallest provocation:
it is not in my temperament, I suppose. But when I heard that little
natural change in his tone my mind went back (I can't say why) to the
happy day when I first owned that I loved him. I burst out crying.

He suddenly stood still, and took me by the hand. He tried to look at
me.

I kept my head down and my eyes on the ground. I was ashamed of my
weakness and my want of spirit. I was determined not to look at him.

In the silence that followed he suddenly dropped on his knees at my
feet, with a cry of despair that cut through me like a knife.

"Valeria! I am vile--I am false--I am unworthy of you. Don't believe
a word of what I have been saying--lies, lies, cowardly, contemptible
lies! You don't know what I have gone through; you don't know how I have
been tortured. Oh, my darling, try not to despise me! I must have been
beside myself when I spoke to you as I did. You looked hurt; you
looked offended; I didn't know what to do. I wanted to spare you even a
moment's pain--I wanted to hush it up, and have done with it. For
God's sake don't ask me to tell you any more! My love! my angel! it's
something between my mother and me; it's nothing that need disturb you;
it's nothing to anybody now. I love you, I adore you; my whole heart and
soul are yours. Be satisfied with that. Forget what has happened. You
shall never see my mother again. We will leave this place to-morrow. We
will go away in the yacht. Does it matter where we live, so long as we
live for each other? Forgive and forget! Oh, Valeria, Valeria, forgive
and forget!"

Unutterable misery was in his face; unutterable misery was in his voice.
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